by Trish Nelson

Sinclair Broadcasting, the nation’s largest owner of local television stations, sixty-two stations at last count, with a local news-destroying business model that involved cutting local staff by laying off the reporters and “centralizing” the news, may be declaring bankruptcy.  This is big news for media reform activists, particularly Iowa’s first, largest and only media reform group that we know of, Iowans for Better Local TV (IBLTV), who in 2005, filed a Petition to Deny licensure with the FCC against Sinclair-owned, KGAN-TV Channel 2 in Cedar Rapids.

Blog for Iowa reported extensively on IBLTV’s activities.  Go to the left sidebar and type IBLTV, Sinclair, Mark Hyman, The Counterpoint, Stolen Honor, etc., and you’ll get a disturbing walk down trauma-memory lane through the state of the media during the height of the Bush years.

While the group is still awaiting action from the FCC on their petition, [full disclosure – I am a founding member] positive things keep happening whether by happenstance or not, we just don’t know.

The first thing that happened was some time in 2006, Mark Hyman, a corporate vice president of the company that they tried to pass off as a local commentator/journalist, who appeared nightly on all Sinclair-owned stations, and actually delivered an on-the-air personal smear of an IBLTV member, suddenly disappeared from the airwaves.  And now this – possible bankruptcy for the company.  What will happen next?  With a brand new FCC chair, perhaps anything is possible, maybe even a citizens’ grievance now almost four years old, possibly getting a response? 

If you have any interest in the story of IBLTV v. Sinclair Broadcasting, it’s mostly available at IBLTV.org.  The Petition is there, too.  Having worked a solid year on it, with bi-monthly meetings and countless hours copying every single comment in the KGAN-TV public inspection file (literally hundreds of pages, most of which were comments from viewers complaining about Mark Hyman), Iowans for Better Local TV would be thrilled if somebody actually read it.